Unstuck

But I have to be at my internship in half an hour, so for now I'm just going to leave you with this song that I'm obsessed with.


Yussuf Jerusalem is apparently
(a) one person.
(b) from France.
(c) mysterious.

Hopefully,  someday I can have all these qualities. At least I think I have (a) down.

Sorry I haven't posted anything in-depth for a while, and I'm still not now, but here's the Amazon link.

It's a "spiritual autobiography" - a faith-based book addressed to her father, who died of TB when she was around a year old. It's extremely religious, which I am not, but this book has meant a lot to my family, for better or for worse, in that this story has not been told at all until now. This grandma is my father's mother, and my father's side, in my experience, has valued pride and emotional strength over most traits, which, while it has its positive outcomes, has lead to a lot of stories being hidden, compounded by my grandma's seen-and-not-heard upbringing. Her writing and distributing this book was a completely unprecedented gesture that, until she told me she was writing a book, I did not expect to happen... and I was even more surprised when I actually read the content in how open she was willing to be with me and everyone. It was really, really touching.

Sarah Palin makes me want to stop paying attention to anything.

DO YOU CALL MAKING WOMEN PAY FOR RAPE KITS supporting women? Are you just making sure that someone keeps an eye on your special place in hell? I mean, there's irony all over the place here, but... i hate everything, especially given this:

I am sick enough of Sarah Palin calling herself a feminist, but now other people? Members of NOW? Sure, feminism is subjective, versatile and dynamic, but I feel like there's some base understanding that you have some larger vision than "I am a woman, and I want to further myself, there are other women out there what really??!? Was that in the newspaper THAT I READ?"

Also, WAAAAH the comment will turn into newspaper? You are running for Vice President of the United States, not Wasilla City Council. You're not some victimized celebrity. You're in a position where you are speaking, PUBLICLY, TO PEOPLE, LOTS OF PEOPLE, AND THE PRESS, WHO GET YOU SPEAKING TO THE PEOPLE OUT TO MORE PEOPLE, and you get mad that someone's gonna quote you on something that you weren't sure you were supposed to say in the first place.

Also Madeleine Albright didn't even say that. She said "there is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." You know, maybe supporting plan B, rape kits, comprehensive sex ed...

Oh, Shelly Mandell clarified later, saying that she is a democrat and so therefore disagrees with Palin on "several issues," but knows that Palin supports "equal rights" and "equal pay." Apparently, enough of a reason to give someone a glowing introduction. Although NOW did not officially support the event, a representative calling Ted Kennedy a "good ole boy" for endorsing Barack Obama (who is not a good ole boy) comes to mind.

This makes me really depressed just because I know there's going to be all this easy backlash against feminism that's not even true, and in mixed company I'll have to dodge questions of the basic format of "oh wait didn't you know feminism is stupid now," and as a feminist, I resent this whole mess, and as a feminist, I resent Sarah Palin, and oh I am so mad every time I read anything about the election because she's sprawled all over it.

Also do you think in the near future it will become so popular to hate Palin that people will start to say she's not that bad, even though she won't be any better? Discuss.

so today, i discovered that i listen to shitgaze. i already liked a whole movement but i guess i didn't read the right blogs or forums or whatever. since when has the internet become a necessary part of musical pretentiousness? there's nothing concrete written about it yet (except for some interview with psychedelic horseshit, who i don't really listen to, who i guess coined it when jokingly talking about themselves), mostly a bunch of tags and arguing, so it's kind of hard to grasp right now. especially when its first use was a total joke, anyway.

anyway, the newer the forum posts get, the more people talk shit about the term "shitgaze," mostly that it's an unnecessary genre for a bunch of bands that only have lo-fi guitar rock in common. but what threw me is, on the last.fm tag page [http://www.last.fm/tag/shitgaze], the second most tagged artists was blank dogs. blank dogs are one of my favorite newer bands. they have a real cool blog [blankdogs.blogspot.com], too.

i never thought of blank dogs as purposely shitty and lo-fi. sure, purposely muddled and weird, but nothing with the crunch or kitsch of other bands thought of as "shitgaze" [the most popular bands that have been called shitgaze right now seem to be no age and times new viking]. what struck me immediately about blank dogs was how the depth of their sound, and how absolutely fucking perfectly calculated their effects were. case in point [LISTEN TO THE VOCALS THEY ALWAYS SOUND LIKE THAT SOOOOOOO GOOD]: [youtube EEihrFQ_85s]

"shitgaze" undoubtedly comes from shoegaze, a mostly-90's genre marked by intricate use of effects and creative guitar noise. i like the term "shitgaze" because, instead of being an arbitrary name to stick on a bunch of bands the same groups of people tend to like [notably the folks over at slitbreeze records], it does describe a unifying and purposeful aesthetic: calculated use of effects and creative guitar noise to create an end-product that sounds muddled and, well, conventionally shitty. in the case of some bands, it just sounds like you're pretending you're broke, leading to the "why do you make this much of an effort to sound like shit" question. but there's so many different, calculated noises you can make within "shit." why can't you make a lot of effort not to just sound like shit, but to sound like that exact shit?

in the case of blank dogs, it's more oversaturated than anything, but still muddled and unintelligible. the aesthetic is only partially an image; mostly, it's an aesthetic all its own. bands like blank dogs being grouped with the rest of shitgaze throw the genre off being purposely broke- and shit-sounding and into "you calling my music purposely shitty is a judgement call on aesthetics" territory.

and sure, doing things just because they're the opposite of what everyone wants is really, really old. but that is exactly why this sort of thing should now be okay.

p.s., i got on this tangent because someone tagged the plot as "shitgaze," which doesn't make that much sense - not too gazey.

anyway, r.i.p. willy graves.

[youtube FqI07ofl1lc]

and you can, too!

I just moved, so I needed to break in my new kitchen so I could get comfortable with it (it was still feeling like someone else's kitchen), so I made black bean veggie loaf with garlic mashed potatoes and sunflower gravy. I really made enough for about four people.

I've omitted spice amount, as I never measure because it's so arbitrary from person to person.

Black Bean Veggie Loaf [modified from what the Magical Loaf Studio gave me because I am bad at following recipes]

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sunflower seeds 2 tablespoons olive oil One small red onion, diced One large garlic clove, minced One large carrot, peeled and chopped One 25 oz can black beans, drained (a little over 2 cups) 1 cup dry whole wheat bread crumbs (next time I am trying cooked brown rice I think) 1/2 cup uncooked polenta Dried oregano Fennel seeds Dried sage A little ketchup Black pepper Seasoning salt 1/4 cup unsweetened soymilk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease a loaf pan.

Grind the sunflower seeds into a coarse meal using a food processor or spice/coffee grinder. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Sauté any vegetables you've chosen in the olive oil until soft. Add to the large mixing bowl along with all the remaining ingredients. Mix and mash together well (or partially blend with a hand blender, which is what I did, still leaving some good chunks), adding only as much liquid as needed to create a soft, moist loaf that holds together and is not runny (you may not need to add any liquid if the grains and protein are very moist). Add more binder/carbohydrate as needed if the loaf seems too wet.

Press mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until cooked through.

Let the loaf cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes.

Sunflower Gravy!

Ingredients: Olive oil A small handful of sunflower seeds (maybe 1/2 cup?) ground up in a food processor, as with above One clove of garlic, pressed Dried sage (a lot) Black pepper Seasoning salt White flour (although soy flour or cornstarch would probably work better if you have it) Unsweetened soymilk

Directions:

Heat up the olive oil in a pan and throw in the pressed garlic, dried sage, black pepper and sseasoning salt (i would have used onion too if there was any left after the veggie loaf). Add the ground sunflower seeds and stir to coat. Mixed in a little flour, stir, add a little soymilk. Alternate flour & soymilk until you reach yr desired texture.

I took pictures, but with my cell phone so they look gross. But it was delicious. Especially the sunflower gravy.

So, I'm kind of obsessed with eventually having a sock hop, and with learning to do the mashed potato:

[youtube mQBKpV9emKc]

Unfortunately, I'm hopelessly awkward. But I'm trying, with the help of some amazing youtube users. Apparently, remaking Hairspray (which I still refuse to see) has made the entire internet obsessed with the Mashed Potato.

There's this one, which is totally jerky but to the point:

[youtube nzGPpPUML94]

And there's this one, which is awkward, longwinded and British but in the long run was more informative:

[youtube KBNDJStgF6Y]

If I eventually have a sock hop, there's some even better general links:

Fiftiesweb appears to have been made by someone who genuinely lived through the 50's. Lots of myth-debunking, song facts, and really to-the-point descriptions - plus she describes what necking and first through third base meant back in the day ("Nice girls didn't go to third base before marriage. Enough said.") Check out the sock hop page!

StreetSwing Dance History Archives is basically a database of dance crazes and their origins. Some tutorial kinda stuff but not always.

Sixties City's dance page is suuuuuper useful. The frug, the watusi, the pony... basically everything. Also, it reveals that the Monster Mash is just the Mashed Potato with monster-like arm waving. SO RAD.

Dance parties, anyone?

this has been at the top of my vinyl want list for a while.  i found out it got rereleased (it says "NEVER BEFORE RELEASED" but it was totally released in japan).

 some say the soundtrack was never made, but i definitely read that there was a limited run of the soundtrack in japan.  some people have put together their own version of the soundtrack out of mp3's (mostly from footsteps in the dark), but the construction of a soundtrack is usually way more interesting than just compiling.  what audio version of a soundtrack can you think of where the songs are in chronological order from the film?  like a compilation cd, the order is meticulously constructed.  plus, it's good to hold your music, have that physicality, read the liner notes.  too bad $70-200 is too much for me to spend on something like that.  i'd want to listen to it, but i'd be scared to.  what if i scratched it? 

 i'm hoping someone accidently fucks up their cover kinda bad so it falls within a reasonable amount to spend on a record. especially a rerelease.

 i wonder if the rerelease of eliott smith's xo affected the price of the original pressings (i mean, probably still expensive, but maybe now they'll stay at a constant $150ish?).

 [youtube KWSq2zq3os4]

 edit: i found the track listing, and despite what i said earlier it looks like the format they used was chronological/bonus. 

Tracklisting:

Side One: Don’t Be Shy On The Road To Find Out I Wish, I Wish Miles From Nowhere Tea For The Tillerman I Think I See The Light

Side Two: Where Do The Children Play? If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out (banjo instrumental)* Trouble Don’t Be Shy (alternate version)* If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out (instrumental version)*

Bonus 7″ Side A: Don’t Be Shy (demo version)* Side B: If You want To Sing Out, Sing Out (alternate version)*

• previously unreleased

[track listing source: http://www.cameroncrowe.com/wordpress/?m=200709]

Recently I wrote an essay on Jacques Lacan and The Who's Tommy. What an easy post to make!

The version I have saved and the version I have turned in are slightly different but you can still tell I'm kind of a dork.

Lacan’s Mirror Stage and the Who’s Tommy

In Jacques Lacan’s theories, the “Mirror Stage” marks the creation of an imaginary identity as your coherent, whole self. A baby, at around six months, sees itself in a mirror and is able to point to herself and separate herself from the Other – she forms an identity separate from “The Real,” or the baby blob that’s part of the bigger meaningless universe gunk, and will enter “The Imaginary,” where she’s able to see herself as whole and coherent. The mirror stage is usually reinforced, according to Lacan, by the mother, who will point at the image and affirm it with something like, “yes, that’s you,” or something even more identity-fixing, such as, “look, you’re such a pretty girl.” She will spend the rest of her life forming and trying to achieve this wholeness and coherency, or her “Ideal-I.” This “Ideal-I” will start to move beyond just the idea of imaginary wholeness and coherency as seen in the mirror, and start snowballing, picking up images from surrounding people and images, for example, her parents, or favorite television shows, or Seventeen. The baby, then the child, teenager, and adult, will anticipate achieving this “Ideal-I,” but will, deep down, know that really, she is messy and fragmented, just like everything and everyone else. This will haunt her for the rest of her life.

In The Who’s rock opera Tommy, the protagonist, Tommy, loses his ability for language when he witnesses, depending on whether you’re listening to the album or watching the film, respectively, either his father (who was previously presumed dead in World War One) killing his mother’s lover or his mother’s lover killing his father (for purposes of this essay, I’ll assume the album story). Even at a young age, he realizes he needs to suppress this memory in order to not break up his family. As a result he becomes, to the world, blind, deaf and dumb, although one can infer it’s all psychosomatic from, first of all, the trigger being his mother telling him he didn’t see anything, and second, his fascination with mirrors. However, when not looking in a mirror, he doesn’t perceive anything through sight or sound, and has no use of language. Once one leaves “The Real,” one cannot return, and at five years old, Tommy would have been past the Mirror Stage for at least four years. But from Tommy’s fascination of mirrors and lack of language, one can assume that Tommy, after witnessing his father’s murder, regressed as far back as he could go without reuniting with The Real, and became perpetually stuck in the Mirror Stage.

What’s most notable about Tommy’s regression, from a Lacanian standpoint, is his lack of language. According to Lacan, you lose the Real when you enter into language. Tommy, having already entered into language before becoming dumb, could not retreat entirely back to the Real; rather, he’s haunted by it, and is probably constantly staring in the mirror for fear of disappearing. Tommy has less moved more toward the Real as much as he’s completely rejected the Symbolic, which is the structure of language itself. The Symbolic and the Imaginary overlap somewhat, but mostly, the Symbolic is marked by becoming a speaking subject, or fully being able to articulate yourself as an “I,” and others as symbols. With a lack of comprehension of symbols, his blindness and deafness is less literal, physical blindness and deafness as much as having no conceptualization of signifiers. When he cannot separate himself from his mother, or a pinball machine, or his father, he’s left fumbling around in a world of inseparable gunk, but with the demands and identity that come along with moving away from the Real. Lacan says that language is always identified by lack; you don’t need language in the Real because the Real is all fullness. Therefore, Tommy has started to feel lack, but has no way to demand, or even articulate, what he needs.

His family, having already gone through Lacan’s stages of development, is concerned for Tommy’s lack of passage through them. Lacan discusses that part of fixing your identity into your “Ideal-I” is fixing your desires and feelings, e.g., fixing your gratitude toward your secretary into Administrative Professionals Week. In “Christmas,” Tommy’s mother and father have learned to fix their religious desires through one holiday, and use Christmas as an excuse to be concerned about Tommy’s lack of ability to accept Jesus, and therefore his entry into Heaven: “But Tommy doesn’t know what day it is/He doesn’t know who Jesus was or what praying is/How can he be saved/from the eternal grave?” Theoretically, Tommy could grab at a Christmas tree and notice there are pine needles in the house, and have that trigger a memory of Christmas from, say, age four. But with a lack of even the most basic symbols, he can’t move onto the more advanced parts of the Symbolic, like fixing desires as part of turning the imaginary self into an “impenetrable armor.” As a last-ditch effort, Tommy’s father takes him to a lady of the night to make him grow up – as part of the deal, she gives him hallucinogenic drugs, saying, “your boy won’t be a boy no more/young but not a child.” By Lacan’s definitions of adulthood, this would mean he would settle into the Symbolic. But alas, this doesn’t work. Tommy continues starting at mirrors and his parents give up, until Tommy discovers pinball.

Being deaf, blind and dumb, Tommy’s success at pinball makes him an overnight celebrity. He collects disciples and corporate sponsorship, which Tommy, having no sense of the symbolic to recognize these followers as an Other, doesn’t really notice. His parents, however, having stepped into the world of materialism long ago, do. As a result, his family becomes very wealthy, and Tommy gets a medical specialist who says he can “cure” Tommy. He can’t, exactly. But Tommy’s suppressed subconscious reaches out to them in “See Me/Feel Me,” which speaks to Lacan’s dislike of repression. In “Smash the Mirror,” Tommy is eventually “cured” when his mother smashes a mirror he’s staring into in her frustration, since he pays so much attention to the mirror and none to her. In the usual Mirror Phase, the mother reinforces the Imaginary by pointing at the image that isn’t actually the baby, just an image, and affirming it. Tommy experiences a reversal of the Mirror Stage, in that his mother rejects Tommy’s imaginary self.

Ironically, at this point, Tommy becomes a cult figure, and his “enlightenment” contributes strongly to others’ senses of “Ideal-I,” i.e., he becomes a mirror himself. Tommy, no longer needing a mirror or having a fear of disappearing, appeals to the masses desiring a fortress, or an unbreakable sense of whole, complete self, particularly Sally Simpson, who sneaks out of her house to see one of his “sermons,” only to be thrown from the stage by security, getting a gash on her face. This could be symbolic of the fear of breaking or disappearing when you don’t have your whole, imaginary “Ideal-I” in sight.

Tommy asks his followers to deafen, blind and mute themselves to gain spiritual enlightenment – presumably, to eliminate their use of symbols and enter the Real, which eventually proves to be impossible for the masses. Eventually, after having been exploited by Tommy’s family and associates who seek commercial gain, Tommy’s followers reject him in the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” in an ultimate testament to the permanence of the Symbolic phase.

Tommy, however, achieves a new level of spiritual enlightenment after being abandoned by his disciples, which I take to be a sense of the Real while still having the Symbolic. “Right behind you/I see the millions/On you/I get opinions/From you/I get the story” could be a declaration of fragmented individuality inside the unified blob in a way Lacan wouldn’t think was even possible.

[youtube Z_am82sYFXU]

ALSO NOTABLE: that is Ann-Margaret who had a semi-successful pop music career in the early 60's, but afterwards has mostly been in a lot of musicals, e.g., Tommy, Newsies.

so, starting thursday and friday, i am moving into a studio apartment, which means my first time living on my own ever. i'm getting a subletter for my house, who is a spiritquester i haven't met! while i was all desperate to find someone to take over my lease at an awkward time it turns out i'm moving out right when she needs to move in. like, to the day. hi, alison!

norm died a few weeks ago (r.i.p. please, next time one of my loved ones is dying, take nwsource instead). since there aren't too many mentions of it outside of nwsource, my mom found spiritquesting. not that i was hiding it particurally, like my livejournal in high school. hi, mom!

sometimes, snap crackle pop is really tiring and it feels like i'm just stuffing two hours full of too much stuff because everything's too short. but sometimes songs rekindle my love of everything:

[youtube En8GJT5VJ_I]

oh oh oh oh feel funny inside!

i recommend headphones, assuming the youtube video has the same overdone stereo effects as the version i have. sooooo good.

and this is always my favorite (the song, although i like pies too). i play it like every other week at least and always feel bad. it's an entirely selfish descision:

[youtube Tui5L6eal3Q]

you caught me, i am actually a sappy sap sap.

nataliedee.com

So this is kind of not what I usually post about (in all, what, four entries before this) but pie is always relevant. And this is really, really easy, it just involves a lot of waiting around.

Inspired by this and a day of sitting around doing nothing, I decided to make this:

IGNORE HOW IT WAS MADE IN A SKILLET, IT IS PART OF THE CHARM. Also, I couldn't find any of my pie pans and this was more slopey than my cake pans. But if you are about to make a pie in a skillet, make sure it doesn't have a plastic handle before you put it in the oven. I fucked up there.

Graham Cracker Crust: Nine vegan graham crackers (one sub-package if you're using Western Family) One stick (half a cup) Earth Balance or other vegan baking margarine 1/3 cup unrefined sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. Melt the margarine. In a bowl, crumble the graham crackers as crumbled as you can get them without getting impatient. Mix in sugar. Add margarine and mix until consistent (I just used my hands). Line a pie pan (hopefully a pie pan) evenly with the mixture. Bake for 8ish minutes - doesn't need to get brown, just set. Refrigerate for around 20 minutes.

Filling: Vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips (around 1 1/4 cup) One single-serving container of raspberry cultured soy (I used Silk Live) 1 14-ounce package firm silken tofu Soymilk (to consistency)

Blend the chocolate chips, cultured soy and silken tofu in either a food processor or a blender (or in a large bowl with a hand blender if you're prepared for some mess). Add a little soymilk to desired consistency and to smooth the blending (I added around a quarter to a half cup and I didn't even need that much).

Pour filling into refrigerated crust and put back in refrigerator for 2 hours. Eat. Make your roommates eat, too.

Also, I guess it's okay to say that I'm going to be the KUGS Operations Coordinator starting in June. Yay!